Theoretical and experimental studies on prey–predator systems where predator is supplied with alternate sources of food have received significant attention over the years due to their relevance in achieving biological conservation and biological control. Some of the outcomes of these studies suggest that with appropriate quality and quantity of additional food, the system can be steered towards any desired state eventually with time. One of the limitations of previous studies is that the desired state is reached asymptotically, which makes the (...) outcomes not easily applicable in practical scenarios. To overcome this limitation, in this work, we formulate and study optimal control problems to achieve the desired outcomes in minimum (finite) time. We consider two different models of additional food provided prey–predator systems involving Holling type IV functional response (with inhibitory effect of prey). In the first scenario, additional food is incorporated implicitly into the predator’s functional response with a possibility of achieving biological conservation through co-existence of species and biological control by maintaining prey at a level that is least harmful to the system. In the second, the effect of additional food is incorporated explicitly into the predator’s compartment with the goal of pest management by maintaining prey density at a very minimal damaging level. For both cases, appropriate optimal control strategies are derived and the theoretical findings are illustrated by numerical simulations. We also discuss the ecological significance of the theoretical findings for both models. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in more than 524 million cases and 6 million deaths worldwide. Various drug interventions targeting multiple stages of COVID-19 pathogenesis can significantly reduce infection-related mortality. The current within-host mathematical modeling study addresses the optimal drug regimen and efficacy of combination therapies in the treatment of COVID-19. The drugs/interventions considered include Arbidol, Remdesivir, Interferon and Lopinavir/ritonavir. It is concluded that these drugs, when administered singly or in combination, reduce the number of infected cells and viral load. (...) Four scenarios dealing with the administration of a single drug, two drugs, three drugs and all four are discussed. In all these scenarios, the optimal drug regimen is proposed based on two methods. In the first method, these medical interventions are modeled as control interventions and a corresponding objective function and optimal control problem are formulated. In this framework, the optimal drug regimen is derived. Later, using the comparative effectiveness method, the optimal drug regimen is derived based on the basic reproduction number and viral load. The average number of infected cells and viral load decreased the most when all four drugs were used together. On the other hand, the average number of susceptible cells decreased the most when Arbidol was administered alone. The basic reproduction number and viral load decreased the most when all four interventions were used together, confirming the previously obtained finding of the optimal control problem. The results of this study can help physicians make decisions about the treatment of the life-threatening COVID-19 infection. (shrink)

In the ground-breaking 2018 judgment of Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India, the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India ushered in a new era by decriminalizing homosexuality, marking a pivotal moment in the country's legal history. However, this progressive stride was accompanied by persistent questions concerning homosexual rights that remained unexplored within both cultural and legal frameworks. Despite the legal acknowledgment, members of the homosexual community are often professed merely as 'individuals' and not fully integrated into mainstream society. This perception (...) is aggravated by the absence of a societal 'stamp of marriage,' reinforcing their marginalization. In the realm of Hindu law, the sanctity of marriage is deeply rooted in the scriptures, which explicitly define it as the union of 'two souls.' Remarkably, these very scriptures also assert that a soul is inherently without gender, elucidating that gender is a characteristic exclusive to the human body. It is crucial to recognize that Hindu law, including the relevant Acts, draws extensively from these scriptures, making them a fundamental source of legal principles. The legislation, such as the Hindu Marriage Act, essentially serves to codify and organize the pre-existing Hindu law without seeking to undermine the intrinsic values enshrined within the Holy Scriptures. This article aims to delve into the unaddressed aspects of homosexual rights within the contemporary legal framework, shedding light on the denied rights that persist. While global attitudes are progressing towards recognizing and safeguarding homosexual rights, the Indian government and cultural factors appear hesitant to renounce orthodox and conservative stances. This article seeks to analyse and critique these aspects, exploring the challenges hindering the full acceptance and integration of homosexual individuals into the broader societal fabric despite the transformative legal landscape initiated by the Navtej Singh Johar case. (shrink)

Subjects perceived touch sensations as arising from a table (or a rubber hand) when both the table (or the rubber hand) and their own real hand were repeatedly tapped and stroked in synchrony with the real hand hidden from view. If the table or rubber hand was then ‘injured’, subjects displayed a strong skin conductance response (SCR) even though nothing was done to the real hand. Sensations could even be projected to anatomically impossible locations. The illusion was much less vivid, (...) as indicated by subjective reports and SCR, if the real hand was simultaneously visible during stroking, or if the real hand was hidden but touched asynchronously. The fact that the illusion could be significantly diminished when the real hand was simultaneously visible suggests that the illusion and associated SCRs were due to perceptual assimilation of the table (or rubber hand) into one’s body image rather than associative conditioning. These experiments demonstrate the malleability of body image and the brain’s remarkable capacity for detecting statistical correlations in the sensory input. (shrink)

As we know, the activity approach to understanding man and his world became widespread in Russian philosophy in the 1960s-70s. At the time, it was, I should emphasize, one of the most significant manifestations of progressive trends in Soviet philosophical thought, which strived to overcome the stagnation and dogmatism of official Marxism. However, as it happens whenever the authority of an intellectual current is established, the activity approach and the category of activity were used frequently in a superficial way, simply (...) because they were fashionable at the time. This gave me occasion to announce, in a collection of articles on the problems of the a tivity approach published in 1976, that a sort of magical word "activity," unsupported by responsible conceptual analysis, was widely used.1 There is no doubt, however, that the development of the activity approach by serious theoreticians was backed up by sufficiently deep conceptual analysis, which advanced our philosophical culture of the time. (shrink)

Издание содержит: научное изучение времени и информации; философское изучение времени и информации; практическое применение знаний о времени и информации и др.

Summary Apotemnophilia, or body integrity image disorder (BIID), is characterised by a feeling of mismatch between the internal feeling of how one’s body should be and the physical reality of how it actually is. Patients with this condition have an often overwhelming desire for an amputation- of a specific limb at a specific level. Such patients are not psychotic or delusional, however, they do express an inexplicable emotional abhorrence to the limb they wish removed. It is also known that such (...) patients show a left-sided preponderance for their desired amputation. Often they take drastic action to be rid of the offending limb. Given the left-sided bias, emotional rejection and specificity of desired amputation, we suggest that there are clear similarities to be drawn between BIID and somatoparaphrenia. In this rare condition, which follows a right parietal stroke, the patient rejects (usually) his left arm as ‘‘alien’’. We go on to hypothesis that a dysfunction of the right parietal lobe is also the cause of BIID. We suggest that this leads to an uncoupling of the construct of one’s body image in the right parietal lobe from how one’s body physically is. This hypothesis would be amenable to testing by response to cold-water vestibular caloric stimulation, which is known to temporarily treat somatoparaphrenia. It could also be investigated using functional brain imaging and skin conductance response. If correct our hypothesis not only suggests why BIID arises, but also, in caloric stimulation a therapeutic avenue for this chronic and essentially untreatable condition. (shrink)

Издание адресовано научным работникам, преподавателям, студентам и аспирантам, а также практикам, интересующимся вопросами философии.

Here we outline a simple method of using two mirrors which allows one to stand outside oneself. This method demonstrates that registration of vision with touch and proprioception is crucial for the perception of the corporeal self. Our method may also allow the disassociation of taste from touch, proprioception, and movement.

Neurological syndromes in which consciousness seems to malfunction, such as temporal lobe epilepsy, visual scotomas, Charles Bonnet syndrome, and synesthesia offer valuable clues about the normal functions of consciousness and ‘qualia’. An investigation into these syndromes reveals, we argue, that qualia are different from other brain states in that they possess three functional characteristics, which we state in the form of ‘three laws of qualia ’ based on a loose analogy with Newton’s three laws of classical mechanics. First, they are (...) irrevocable: I cannot simply decide to start seeing the sunset as green, or feel pain as if it were an itch; second, qualia do not always produce the same behaviour: given a set of qualia, we can choose from a potentially infinite set of possible behaviours to execute; and third, qualia endure in short-term memory, as opposed to non-conscious brain states involved in the on-line guidance of behaviour in real time. We suggest that qualia have evolved these and other attributes (e.g. they are ‘filled in’) because of their role in facilitating non-automatic, decision-based action. We also suggest that the apparent epistemic barrier to knowing what qualia another person is experiencing can be overcome simply by using a ‘bridge ’ of neurons; and we offer a hypothesis about the relation between qualia and one’s sense of self. (shrink)

How the brain constructs one's inner sense of gender iden-tity is poorly understood. On the other hand, the phenomenon of phantom sensations-- the feeling of still having a body-part after amputation--has been much studied. Around 60% of men experience a phantom penis post-penectomy. As transsexuals report a mismatch between their inner gender identity and that of their body, we won-dered what could be learnt from this regarding innate gender-specific body image. We surveyed male-to-female transsexuals regarding the incidence of phantoms post-gender (...) reassignment surgery. Addition-ally, we asked female-to-male transsexuals if they had ever had the sensation of having a penis when there was not one physically there. In post-operative male-to-female transsexuals the incidence of phan-tom penises was significantly reduced at 30%. Remarkably, over 60% of female-to-male transsexuals also reported phantom penises. We explain the absence/presence of phantoms here by postulating a mis-match between the brain's hardwired gender-specific body image and the external somatic gender. Further studies along these lines may provide penetrating insights into the question of how nature and nur-ture interact to produce our brain-based body image. (shrink)

This paper aims to make an anti-canonical reading of the avivakṣitavācya-variety of dhvani conceptualized by the ninth century Sanskrit literary critic Ānandavardhana in his seminal work Dhvanyāloka. In this paper, I argue that avivakṣitavācya-dhvani opens up a signifier to new significations that are not conventionally associated with it through a process of deterritorialization. In any language, convention functions as a structuring mechanism upon a signifier by clearly demarcating a rigid semantic ambit for it. By the term ‘conventional semantic ambit’, I (...) mean the boundary of signification set by convention for each signifier. The primary problem associated with the imposition of a definite territory upon a signifier is that it prevents an individual signifier from representing any new significations that are not conventionally attached to it. For example, in the conventional semantic ambit, the word ‘cat’ cannot represent the idea of a ‘dog’. In the act of mapping a fixed territory for each signifier, convention also structures the individual-user of the language by forcing him or her to confine to a specific plan of dealing with signifiers. Thus, the individual user of language within a conventional semantic ambit is rendered absolutely passive, as s/he has nothing new to contribute or create, other than reproducing an always-already existing plan of functioning. It is precisely this structuring tendency of convention that gets challenged in Ānanda’s avivakṣitavācya-dhvani. Such a mechanism is definitely a liberating experience for both the signifier and the individual-users of the language who are forced to accept the signifiers in a specific fashion. Along with the exposition of avivakṣitavācya-dhvani’s resistance to a signifier’s conventional semantic ambit, this paper also aims to conceptualize the figure of the reader that avivakṣitavācya-dhvani anticipates for itself. (shrink)

An interview with Anthony Freeman, in which one of the original authors of ‘The Science of Art’ [JCS, 6, No. 6/7, 1999] responds to to ongoing commentary.

Clarification of the essence of the mental reflection of reality means to reveal its most general and yet most specific characteristics, distinguishing it from all other phenomena and properties. It will be helpful to approach the solution of this problem from two sides. In the first place, this task calls for a consideration of the initial, elementary and genetically earliest form of the reflection of reality and the circumstances under which it arises. This elementary and lowest form may be understood (...) if, pursuing the method of Marx, we regard the lowest as a "hint" of the highest, when the highest is known . In the given instance, the developed forms of the mental reflection of reality are better known to us than their initial phases. In the second place, the question of the most general features of the property of reflection is closely related to a consideration of motion as the fundamental property of matter. Only a combination of these two lines of analysis will, in our opinion, make it possible, on the one hand, to keep in view the specific features of the process of reflecting reality in cognition and, on the other, to liberate us from anthropomorphic preconceptions ascribing to the elementary form of reflection of reality the characteristics of its highest form-conscious reflection. (shrink)